Matilda 2
by apelle
Summary: Love is a game…a fun game of catch-me-if-you-can.


Love is a game…a fun game of catch-me-if-you-can. Once playing starts, you must take turns at

getting caught. It is a basic principle; if you want to be loved, you have to let yourself caught.

She never let Michael win so he never loved her. Larry thought he won, but didn't, so he

didn't matter.

She was a tough child who wore either white socks or nothing.

Her emotions had the intensity of a raging fire. Air, with all due respect, vibrated with her

beating heart. She was sure she'd go to hell but something made her think she could change

before it was too late. In hell, your desires are never satisfied. That's what they say.

_Was she scared?_

Yes, maybe. She cut her life against the grain.

On a shelf in her living room, she kept a gray box filled with letters and old photos. Never

sentimental—she fought hard against the emotion. But, every so often, she'd open the box; its

contents were like Seurat paintings with a multitude of seemingly random dots coming together

as faces, words, and memories. They stirred a unique feeling in her belly, like an itch that could

not be scratched.

Her blue eyes matched up pieces of the big puzzle—fitting faces to words and the reverse.

In turn, she turned a postcard or photo in her hands and read the few lines on the back. Some she

barely remembered—some she knew by heart.

"Friday evening. Friday. Wait for me."

The postcard had a mountain landscape on the front and his scrawled signature on the back.

Matilda was sixteen when she pushed her body into the dance of gestures—delicate and

haphazard. The arc of her weird life formed a parabola. She came back to everything left behind.

Sixteen and enslaved by Saul's detailed complexity. Saul, a dark, Machiavellian man with

glowing, controlling green eyes.

Twenty years prior, in a wooden cabin surrounded by woods and mountains, an innkeeper

shouted something about a storm. Matilda did not care. She stared at the woods with intense

persistence—trying to match the green mountains of the postcard's image with the twilight view

displayed in front of her as real life. When she held the postcard and quickly looked toward the

sun setting behind the mountains, she could almost hold the image in place. But an errant rock or

incongruous slope—unmatched in the postcard—interfered with her task.

A voice came from behind.

"Close one eye, then switch to the other—you can get it."

A heavy hand fell on her shoulders. Behind her was Saul—in murky shadows and looking

rough as if after a long hike. He seemed preoccupied and in a hurry, but his gestures were soft

and his voice velvety.

"Come on...come in, a storm is coming."

Her nostrils caught the ionic smell of electricity. She wanted to stay and watch.

She responded with unwanted indecision.

"I like the rain and wind…I like the feel of danger."

Inside, with unnecessary loudness, the innkeeper closed the shutters. Increasingly insistent,

the wind whined.

Her voice was as quiet as a whisper.

"It will be a wonderful storm."

Thunder. Angry, untamed clouds broke above the cabin. The shutters strained at their

hinges.

Thunder burst between them and attacked shelves bearing an army of lined-up bottles—

they clanked like an absurd percussive concerto. The roof rattled as if attacked by drunken

carpenters. With the next thunderclap, the deafening storm rushed in—fast and furious.

Afterward, she watched him sit at the base of a tree and smoke a cigarette. Beyond the

trees, the moon and stars sprouted. It was late, terribly late. She sat next to him with her knees

raised to her chin.

He smiled.

"What causes the stars to appear and disappear?"

She answered with a laugh.

"It's the job of a naughty girl…to light them with a magic wand as penance for past

mistakes."

White socks loosely rode her thin ankles and emphasized the contours of her faultless legs.

The image led to thought, thought to excitement, and excitement to the sin of unhindered desire.

With an artist's skill, he kindled warmth in her belly.

Desire.

Intense emotions vibrated and flowed between their bodies.

Life's tragic events clear the spirit. Later on, that's what she was told.

Her memories were like trains. Some screamed by quickly, others were heavy with

travelers. Some were routed to forgotten side rails…fenced in and neglected. Driverless, with

broken windows—rusty and desolate. She could not scrap them. They were vestiges of her life.

We would be nothing without remembered people and events.

Some trains started a long journey but ended up abandoned.

She reviewed images recorded long ago and felt things, perhaps imagined, as frightfully

real hallucinations. She took comfort in false security—that dead history was safe and could not

touch her.

During her mental wandering she grasped at who she might be…flesh and bones, soul and

spirit or perhaps just a random thought in God's feverish mind.

Now, her life was a gray box filled with old letters, postcards and photographs.

Long ago, in a storm's aftermath, Saul sat at the base of a tree and gazed at white socks

embracing her tanned ankles.

What do _you _think causes the stars appear and disappear?


End file.
